Just Like Them
by KayLeFay
Summary: Jim Moriarty has put a lot of things in his mouth over the course of his thirty-two years on this earth, all without so much as a wince.    Today, he takes a sip of vanilla soymilk.


Jim Moriarty has put a lot of things in his mouth over the course of his thirty-two years on this earth, all without so much as a wince.

Today, he takes a sip of vanilla soymilk.

Seb suspects that even a mollusk at the bottom of the Mariana Trench could hear the scream that follows. If there _are_ mollusks at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. He reasons that the intense heat and the water pressure would be a bit of a deterrent. Shaking himself out of the daze that results from the constant stimuli of life with Jim, Sebastian Moran bolts to the kitchen.

He finds the consulting criminal sniffling piteously on the kitchen floor, the fingers of his right hand curled tightly around the stem of a wineglass. A milky substance has run down the sides of the glass and is now forming a small pond around Jim's shoes.

With Jim, there is no calm before the storm. There's just storm. Seb watches and takes a calming breath as Jim lets the white liquid seep into the seams of his Ferragamos. It's unprecedented. Jim clings to destruction in all areas of life, with the distinct exception of his wardrobe. He will have to treat Jim with as much care as he would a kitten.

A kitten who also happens to be a serial killer, but a kitten nonetheless. And as much as he's loath to admit it, Seb has a weakness for kittens. Although, to be fair, it is his _only_ weakness.

He slides down the wall so he's sitting directly across from Jim, though at the other end of the kitchen, and waits for him to speak. The waiting is dangerous. Silence, rare as it is in their apartment, renders Jim even more unpredictable. Say the wrong thing; he'll lash out. Say nothing, he'll probably lash out anyway.

"You can't milk a bean," Jim stage-whispers. His smile is conspiratorial, but Seb can see it cracking at the edges, crumbling like ancient marble. Underneath, he knows it's growing back, stronger even before it's gone in the first place and that it's re-knitting together better than broken bones.

Jim wouldn't have a standard complaint. It isn't that he doesn't like vanilla, Seb thinks, or even that he detests soymilk. No, it's the idea that it comes from a bean that's getting to him.

"That's not it, either," says Jim, as though Seb has just said that out loud.

Seb got used to this long ago, this thing that so many people hate about Jim. Not that he ever showed his astonishment, certainly not. Seb never grovels. He just accepts.

"Soy juice," suggests Seb.

"Certainly a more apt name," Jim agrees, "but not it."

They sit in relative silence—relative because Seb can hear the humming of the fridge and hopes that Jim won't start to notice it or he'll have it ripped out of the wall and then the clavicle that Jim's been picking at, the one with shreds of flesh and tendons still strung at the bone, will start to smell and then Seb will _never_ let Jim put his "experiments" in the fridge again and then Jim will break Seb's _other_ little finger and refuse to sleep with him for at least a month and for God's sake they just came off a dry spell—and Jim doesn't move.

Nothing moves, not Jim, not Seb, not the red velvet curtains in the windows that hide stains both wine and blood. Mostly blood.

Seb can't know what to do, but not doing anything can be the most dangerous act of all, so he tries again. "Soy…water?"

For a minute it's all fine but then Jim's done it, his smile has cracked and the underlayer is bruised and worn and not as knit together as Seb had thought and Jim's launching the wineglass towards the ceiling where it instantly becomes something different, something called pieces of a wineglass and a short burst of noise, and it's in Jim's hair and Seb feels a small cut above his right eyebrow.

And Jim sighs, this little noise that makes Seb think again of kittens. Sighs, like it's such an indulgence, like there is so much else he could and should be doing apart from looking like he might want to drown in a Westwood suit, in a soymilk puddle. The glass in his hair is like salt, and Seb thinks fondly—and with no little apprehension—of an older Jim, a Jim to come but not likely to, really, when he thinks about it. Jim will always be thirty-two.

Certainly, he won't break forty. He'll be just like Marilyn. And Seb tries not to laugh, because there are so many reasons why Jim is not like Marilyn Monroe in any way, but there are a few where he is, and it's mostly when he plays the ukulele because it's like those scenes in _Some Like it Hot_ and Seb really thinks he loves him then.

Jim never cries because there's not enough of him to waste. "You could've taken it," he says.

Seb feels like he got left behind several thoughts ago. "Yes," he says, as noncommittally as possible, so it doesn't mean a thing.

"Could've thrown it at your oversized brow-ridge," Jim says, sliding the words through his round little tenor so they sound almost like a compliment.

"Wouldn't have taken out more than an eye," Jim continues, "if that."

"Yeah?"

"Depending on how you moved. Did you want to lose an eye today?"

Seb pretended to consider, knew that Jim knew he was pretending to consider, knew that Jim wasn't exactly joking.

"Not my number one priority, no," says Seb.

"Are you sure? I could always arrange something."

"I'm sure."

There's another not-quite-silence-humming-fridge and then Jim is sitting right next to Seb, twisted slightly towards him and there's glass powder from where Jim crunched over it and Seb knows, knows it's not sand and never will be but it's fun to think about.

Jim's nuzzling his shoulder, and they're just like everybody else.


End file.
